By Sean Jones: Teofimo Lopez vs. George Kambosos Jr. is now official for Monday, October 4th at Madison Square Garden in New York after both fighters signed their contracts for this Triller PPV event.

What a pure 100% mess this fight has been from day one, and it’ll be good when this nightmare is finally over with.

ESPN is reporting the Lopez-Kambosos Jr. is now a done deal for October 4th, which is an odd date, but the reason for that is to avoid conflicting with the potential New York Yankees vs. Boston Red Sox MLB game.

Teofimo could have fought three times already

For IBF/WBA/WBC/WBO lightweight champion Teofimo (16-0, 12 KOs), he’s got to be happy that he’s finally getting this terrible albatross of a fight out of the way.

Teofimo may have thought that he was smart by taking the fight with the little-known Kambosos Jr. (19-0, 10 KOs) to the purse bid process, but it’s resulted in him losing one year of his career.

If Teofimo had take agreed with his promoters at Top Rank that the fight wasn’t PPV-worthy, yeah, he would have gotten less money than he is now, but he probably would have fought Kambosos a long time ago. So instead of fighting three times in 12 months, Teofimo is hoping to fight once.

The $4 million paydays Teofimio is getting for the fight with Kambosos Jr. is good, but not when you factor that he’s missing out on two additional paydays that Teo could have had if he’d let Top Rank put it on regular ESPN rather than going through the purse bid process.

Now, all we can hope for is some other strange disaster doesn’t get in the way of the October 4th Teofimo vs. Kambosos Jr. fight date, causing it to be postponed yet again.

Fans want to see Teofimo vs. Lomachenko 2

Teofimo captured his four lightweight titles eleven months ago, beating the injured Vasily Lomachenko by a 12 round unanimous decision on October 17th, 2020.

Had Lomachenko not been injured, Teofimo probably would have lost because he fell apart completely from the seventh round when the one-armed two-time Olympic gold medalist began pressuring him.

Originally, Teofimo was supposed to get his first defense out of the way against his IBF mandatory Kambosos Jr. on June 5th, 2021. Still, that date was moved to June 19th to avoid conflict with Floyd Mayweather Jr’s exhibition match against YouTuber Logan Paul.

The Lopez-Kambosos Jr. fight was then moved to August 14th due to Teofimo suffering a COVID-19 illness. Now, the fight has been moved to October 4th, and all we can do is hope that it’ll finally take place on that date.

Triller surprised many people in the boxing world when they won the purse bid to stage the Teofimo vs. Kambosos Jr. fight by bidding a whopping $6 million for what was essentially a low-level title defense for Teo. Kambosos Jr. isn’t a big star, and he’s not expected to be competitive with Teofimo unless he’s lost something in the last 12 months.

George Kambosos Jr. will need a miracle

Kambosos Jr’s best wins were narrow split decision victories over 37-year-old Mickey Bey and 34-year-old Lee Selby. Neither of those guys is considered major players at 135, and the fact that Kambosos Jr. barely beat them shows what Teofimo will be dealing with.

Boxing fans want to see Teofimo get this fight with Kambosos Jr. out of the way as soon as possible so that he can face Lomachenko in a rematch.

After all the bragging Teofimo did after his win over Lomachenko last year, fans want to see if he can beat him when he’s healthy and has two good arms. Most people believe Teofimo will be schooled by Lomacheenko the second time around, but they still want to see it.

“Teofimo Lopez-George Kambosos is now officially set for Monday, Oct. 4 at New York’s Hulu Theater at MSG; both fighters have signed the contracts, Triller COO Thorsten Meier tells ESPN. Triller smart to avoid the possibility of Yankees-Red Sox playoff game on Oct. 5 in New York,” said @MikeCoppinger.